Stop Ignoring Your Crock Pot!
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I bought a crock pot awhile ago, thinking that I found the solution to my nightly dinner dilemma. Like so many other “crock pot fanatics”, the bloom was off the rose as soon as I found myself with a bit more time and money to spend. So, my crock pot found it’s way into the deep, dark recesses of my pantry, never to be heard from again. Or so I thought. My budget is tighter than ever and time is at a premium, as well. Dinnertime is again centered on a warm and wonderful crock pot meal, much to the delight of my family.
A little heads up. If your crock pot is more than 7 or 8 years old, you’ll want to invest $30 or $40 in a new one. Crock pots have improved, and you can find models with better energy efficiency, timed starts, temperature settings by degree, warming cycles, secure lids, and a host of other features. Besides the new features, I keep reading that crock pots save money and time. How exactly does that work?
Money Saving: When you are cooking a beef stew, simmering soup or spaghetti sauce, or making a nice pot roast, you are using your appliance for long hours. If you use an oven, you are committing roughly 2500 watts to this meal. If you cook your pot roast in the oven for about 3 hours, calculated roughly, you’ll be using about 10 kWh for that meal. If you cook that same pot roast in a crock pot for about 6 hours, you’ll be committing about 200 watts, or calculated roughly again, about 1.2 kWh for the same meal. Heating up a whole oven for a pot roast doesn’t make sense when you can put it in it’s very own, personal sized oven - your crock pot. Using any of the informative energy consumption calculators on the internet, compare your own data and see if cooking with your crock pot makes sense to you.
Crock pots are the perfect home for inexpensive cuts of meat. You’re going to cook using low heat and a long, slow cooking method. This method best suits meat that is more sinewy with more connective tissue because it breaks down all the tough stuff. You’ll be cooking in liquid, too, which tenderizes the budget cuts, which you’ll find becomes fork-tender. As a matter of fact, the more tender meat cuts don’t work that well in crock pot recipes as they just break down too much. Try budget cuts like brisket, rump roasts, round steak, pork shoulders, and the like, for some surprisingly delicious and tender meals.
Are you spending money on fast food? How many times have you rushed through the convenience store, spending money you didn’t have on bad food? Here’s where your crock pot can save you money with a little planning. Get your meal planned, shop, and prepare everything ahead of time. Now, when everybody gets home after school and work, and all that evening chaos begins, at least you know you have dinner bubbling away in the crock pot. No more quick, and expensive, stops for fast food.
When the weather turns hot and steamy, you don’t need to add any more heat to your house by cooking a meal. With the air conditioner running, it seems foolish to start heating your oven or stove top. Unfortunately, I can’t live on salads all summer long. There comes a time when my family and I want a hot meal, even in the summer. Having the crock pot cooking away on the counter top doesn’t heat up the kitchen, and we get a hearty meal, without stressing out our air conditioner.
Time Saving: Consider your time spent over a stove top, watching a pot boil, stirring the contents, as your valuable time wasted. One-pot meals are real time savers, but only if you don’t have to watch it cook. And, yes, a pot roast in the oven is certainly a time saver, but it is not a money saver. We want both, now don’t we?
The whole family can help put a crock pot meal together, which frees up some of my time. I don’t worry about my kids getting burned on a hot stove, so they can wash vegetables and throw them right in the crock pot for me. You don’t start a crock pot cooking until everything is inside, so it’s safe for the kids to be in the kitchen helping. And because there are so many recipes for simple crock pot meals, recipes which require only a few main ingredients, anyone, even my non-cooking husband, can grab a recipe and throw together a meal to help out.
Nightly stops at the store to quick grab something to cook for dinner is a serious waste of time. Now I take one trip to the grocery store, and buy everything I need for at least three crock pot meals. I can plan several all-in-one-step meals, buy and even prep a lot of the ingredients ahead of time, and pop a meal in the crock pot in the morning. Now, we can go straight home from the soccer game… home to a hot meal!
Money and Time Saving: By doubling your crock pot recipes, you’ll have leftovers for lunches or be able to put the extra meal in the freezer for later. Not only is it convenient to have your lunch all ready, but it is also a money saver; no more money spent eating out at work. Having a freezer full of meals is a great time saver, too. Who doesn’t love finding a meal all ready to just heat up and go? The money saved by using your crock pot just once to produce two meals just makes sense to me.
Look at your poor crock pot just waiting for you to come to your senses, once again. I know you can do it, once you start looking through all the new recipes! Get your kitchen counter cleared off, set up your crock pot, and make out your grocery list. Now, won’t you enjoy saving all that time and money when you cook?
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